


Choose

by DottyDot



Series: How It Could Happen [8]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, jonsa, post parentage reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 12:30:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18521557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DottyDot/pseuds/DottyDot
Summary: “I know the cost of our loves. I know too well how they fall on the scale, one outweighing the other. I know what you tried to tell me. I know.” She was looking at him now, and he was afraid, but he would say the words that he had been unable to silence. “I never had the chance to choose you, but I would. I would choose you every time.”





	Choose

"You love her."

It was snowing, they stood on the battlements as they had before, but nothing was at it had been. Jon ducked his chin into his furs, his answer clear to Sansa even if he wouldn't speak it. The wind sent a flurry of snowflakes into her face, onto her uncovered hair, and while they melted on her cheeks, her braids, and dampened her sleeves, she felt none. The snowflakes were no longer a promise, no longer a comfort, nothing was as it had been.

"Petyr loved me in his way, and yet he sold me to Ramsay Bolton as part of his plan to take the throne. There is a hierarchy to our loves, an order to what we would do, what we would sacrifice for them. People who love power love nothing else enough to slow their pursuit of it. There's no one they spare, nothing is too great a sacrifice compared to their lust for crown and throne." 

As harsh as the words were, her voice was gentle. She wouldn't look at him. She never wanted to speak of Petyr, and he could only imagine how she viewed his decisions while away. "Sansa--"

"Do you understand me?"

_He saw her, telling him she would rather die than go back to Bolton. He saw her, next to Baelish, as the Knights of the Vale rode in to save him and the Free Folk. He saw her, her eyes closed as he took her face in his hands after they agreed to trust each other. He saw her, telling him he was a good ruler. He saw her, pleading with him to be smarter._ _He saw her, battered, filthy, holding onto him as the last Stark._ They were alone then, but not now. Nothing would be the same.

"I understand." He said, at last, to silence her, hurt that the faith he had in her was not returned in kind to him.

“I spoke with Gilly.”

“I did not know of Sam’s family.”

"It wouldn't have changed anything if you had."

"I warned her about destroying cities."

"Maybe you will find time to warn her about burning her subjects in fits of rage as well."

"Sansa--"

"Our grandfather and uncle were burned alive by a Targaryen King. The Northern Lords and our father went to war to save us from his madness. Your best friend's father and brother were burned alive by a Targaryen Queen and--"

"Yes, but my _other_ grandfather was the Mad King who killed them. So, if you want to hate Daenerys by virtue of her heritage, you should hate me too. We are the same blood."

"You are unusually dense on this subject,  _cousin_. I don't care about her heritage for the sake of attributing evils that are not her own. She is choosing methods that we cannot support, a path we cannot follow. It is not only our family that fought in Robert's Rebellion. The North Remembers."

"So, you plan to betray our word."

"Not our word,  _yours_. I would never have bent the knee."

"Because you don't know what we face."

"No, because I have no interest in bedding her." Now she looked at him, now she examined him, and now she judged him. "You are like all the rest of them. You see a beautiful woman and that's where your observations end, her hair, her skin. You see her eyes as beautiful and never ask what it is that _she’s_ seeing through them. You can't fathom that a woman is more than what she does for you, that what she is bound to matters more than whether she is a torment or a comfort to you.”

"I will not hear this, Sansa." He turned from her, but she grabbed his arm, pulling him back to face her. "Yes, you _will_. You will hear everything I have to say. And you will listen to me because you don't understand these people."

"You haven't seen what’s coming--"

"No, none of us have, but we trusted you. We have been faithful all these months while you were away because we believed in _you_. The Dragon Queen saw with her own eyes, yet she still went South because of her obsession with that throne."

"She lost her child for--"

"Dragons are not children. Don't you _dare_ compare the lives of any of our people to the life of a creature. Lady died, father killed Lady, and I still miss her, but what is that compared to the loss of Rickon? Would you dare compare it to the death of Robb or his child? Every Northerner has lost family, and regardless of her love for her dragons, their blood does not equal the cost of human life. Don't follow along with this delusion.”

"She risked her life for me."

"I am not denying that she loves you in her way, but her way will never be enough. When she finds out--"

"She doesn't have to find out."

"Jon, she will. They _all_ will, eventually. You are a threat to her. If at any time someone was unhappy with her rule, they could rally men to your cause and--"

"I won't betray her."

"Don't betray her. I'm not asking you to, but _please_ listen--"

Frustration that after every sacrifice, that his every offer of trust, that nothing he had done and nothing he could do would erase her view of him surged within him. He furiously hissed at her, "Are you scheming? Are you truly incapable of believing others are good or true or—you sound like Baelish. You allowed him to whisper in your ear for too long."

He expected a sharp rejoinder, not the gasp, the tears that formed but did not fall, "I love you. I want you to be safe. I don't like watching you have to bribe and reason and appease her as if she's a child. You left _a King_! You came back a—" Sansa’s vehemence met an abrupt halt.

He was a defeated, beaten man. Nothing he did was right, even this. "Say it. Whatever it is you're thinking, say it."

"You come back a man less than what he is.” Her face registered more emotion than she had permitted it since Jon left. She sighed, "I’m trying to protect you."

He needed her. Of all his fears, how much he needed her was the greatest. This was the moment to tell her, to explain, but he was afraid, and he was angry, and he was hurt, and of all his options, he chose the only one that would grant him some escape, because he could not stay here with her and play this game. If he stayed, he would speak and nothing would be as it had been. "And what is it you're always telling me? Stop trying."

Sansa did not try to detain him. Their conversation ended as each one since his return had. Heated cheeks, breathlessness, and Jon walking away, as if he could not bear to be near her any longer.

More than her frustration, Sansa felt inexplicable grief. How often had they argued before, how many times had he walked away from her? But this had the ring of truth to it. It meant he was distancing himself in more ways than one, and that was a wound she had never anticipated.

Jon stormed away, determined not to hear what he knew he should listen to. His fath--uncle had died, his cousin, the King in the North had died. _He_ had died. And somehow, Sansa, who had less power than any of them, had survived. He should listen, but he couldn't bear it. It sounded too much like the truth.

Arya walked from the turret's shadows. "That didn't go well." 

"As well as it could have. Not as badly as it might have."

"I'll watch them, but there's only so much we can do. When she finds out..." 

Sansa's face was pale, pained, she knew, they both did.

They stood together, the snow now coming in gusts from behind them as they watched the Dothraki set up camp and fill the field with their tents and horses. It should have been a comfort, but all Sansa could see was how much food it would take to feed them, how many would fall ill, how many would freeze. 

Arya thought only of how many she would be able to kill when it came to it.

"He loves her desperately." Sansa said at last. 

Arya disagreed. "He's desperate to love her."

"I don't understand the difference." 

Arya admired her sister’s intelligence, her capabilities, but as much as she believed Jon was too focused on the Great War, Sansa was caught as well, trying to ensure the safety of them all by venturing onto the web of power. As she watched and listened to her opponents, she mistook and misjudged her own family, in spite of everything she did being for them. Arya chose not to speak of it, content to let the truth unravel in its own time. She offered the smile that had been unused for so long it still hurt her face to wear it. "You will."

\--

Sansa sent Brienne away to bring her wine. She had never developed a taste for it, but she could not silence any of Jon’s words that insisted on echoing in her head. She could not unsee his hand on the Dragon Queen’s waist, how she looked at him, how they had risen up into the sky, leaving Winterfell, leaving _her_ , behind. Jon had never been her brother, he had become something else, and now, what they’d been to each other since reuniting felt like yet another lie she’d been told. She was a stupid girl, and for all her learning, she had forgotten the lesson that would have spared her this: love no one but your children.

She had calmed the Northern Lords, spoken words she had begun to question, although she testified to Jon’s loyalty to their people, that he had only done what was necessary. She had assured Jon he was a Stark to her regardless of his birth, although her father’s lie broke her heart as well. Jon’s pain hurt her, but Sansa could not help thinking of her mother. Her mother had lived a lie and suffered for it, and Sansa thought she felt a flicker of that misery when Jon walked away from her, no doubt seeking comfort in another woman’s arms.

The door opened without a knock, she turned expecting Brienne’s concerned eyes, but instead it was the foreign queen stepping into her bedchamber, closing the door behind her. She appeared as comfortable intruding here as she had been walking the battlements with Jon, exploring the crypts, presiding at the head table in the great hall. As at ease as if this was her home, hers and Jon’s, and it was her right to do as she wished in it.

Sansa had borne it all, the humiliation of having defended Jon only to discover while she’d been trying to keep his crown, he had given it away. Instead of presiding over hearings with the Northern Lords from her usual seat, she had calmly moved, making way for the new queen, a woman who did not know this place, could not understand these people, would not even acknowledge their kings.

Sansa was steel, invulnerable to such things, she might feel it, but nothing would break her now. She would do what she must for her people to survive, even though the white fur, the pale hair, the smug smile of this Queen made her feel a prisoner again. Winterfell was no longer hers, not with the dragons laying claim to it all, her people, her home, her family.

She had stopped brushing her hair, staring at this strange woman, and while she told herself there was nothing she could not endure, the Dragon Queen’s smile as she approached came as close to unbearable as any suffering Sansa had experienced.

These were her father’s rooms, a man whose sister had been seduced and left to die by a Targaryen, a man whose brother and father had been murdered by a Targaryen, a man who had gone to war to end the dynasty built on destruction, and here before her stood a Targaryen conqueror. In the room where her mother and father had been safe, where she had rarely dared to venture as a child, a sacred place for her parents to escape the demands of life. And here was the Queen, invading yet another part of her world. Winterfell was her home, and now it was no longer hers.

She rose and the queen smiled, motioning for her to sit, “I wish to try again. We have not had an opportunity to speak privately. Our first meeting with your bannermen did not go well, and I would—I would be your friend.”

Sansa placed her brush on the table which the Dragon Queen picked it up, and to Sansa’s shock, proceeded to run her fingers and then the brush through Sansa’s red hair. “I do this for my friend” the queen offered, as if such an act were anything but incomprehensible.

“Your friend?”

“Missandei.”

Sansa attempted to lower her stiff shoulders that had instinctively risen, but it was difficult to breath through her fury. She forced the rise and fall of her chest and wondered that her skin did not burn the Queen’s hands.

“I always wished for a sister.” The Queen murmured, running her fingers through Sansa’s hair, admiring the tamed flame.

Sansa had minded herself as a girl in King's Landing, had bitten her tongue or spoken of her stupidity to hide her sarcasm, to conceal her rebellion. She had told the lies demanded of her to stay alive, and it had saved her. She had survived beatings and rape and torture because she was smart. She respected the power of crowns and titles and armies, had kissed and curtsied and flattered, bitten her tongue and smiled because it would bring her home. And she was finally home, but now another came, and threatened everything she held dear.

The Targaryen was in her room, holding her mother's brush, wanting to be her sister, asking for Sansa to give something that she did not want to give. The Queen had Jon, he'd given her the North, this was too much. _This_ Sansa did not have to endure. Sansa told herself she was smarter than this, but she was tired of being smart. She should swallow the bile in her throat, permit this strange queen to conquer country and castle and her without resistance, let this woman have everything. Sansa chose not to. She did not want to bear it. She would never be conquered again.

The Queen was speaking in a soothing voice as if Sansa were a child to be placated, “Perhaps, you and I might—”

Sansa abruptly stood, weary of this façade, worn through with trusting and believing only to have her every fear realized. She held her hand out for the brush which the Queen returned to her, and Sansa gently rubbed her fingers along the bristles. “This was my mother’s hairbrush. She died, my father died, two of my brothers died, all because we left this place. Winterfell will never be without a Stark again. You may be standing here Your Grace, there is nothing I can do to stop you, but you are not a Stark. You are not of the North. You do not belong here.”

Daenerys’ impossibly beautiful face froze, “I am here to save the North.”

“Reserve your speeches for those who admire your face rather than listen to what you say. Your lips are full and beautiful, but we both know your words are as hollow as your promises.”

Sansa knew she had to be imagining it, yet she thought she saw flames rise up in Daenerys eyes, just for a moment, until the Queen recollected herself. "Your brother has bent the knee to me. You are my subject. Do not anger me, Sansa Stark."

The Queen walked to a window, standing in a circle of light as if even the moon could not resist her. And she was beautiful, possibly the most beautiful woman that Sansa had ever seen, and she understood all too well the worshipful looks that must pave the way for such a woman’s decisions. She knew what power beyond armies and dragons that this Queen wielded, that her true strength was beguiling and mesmerizing and seducing power from another’s hand into her own. Sansa knew she was foolish, that she must play the game, but this was home. She was done with permitting women to think they could threaten her in her own home, in this room. She was the blood of Winterfell; she was stronger within its walls.

"You do not need to threaten me. I know very well you would rather we ungrateful Northerners die than another dragon, but then, all the Lords and Ladies of Westeros know your penchant for burning people, don't they? What they don't know, is what I know. I know what you are, My Queen."

"And what is that?" The Queen glared at her with the fury of a woman who none could resist, who had therefore never learned to resist herself.

"The first time you burned someone was unpleasant, wasn't it? But the next wasn’t quite as horrible. You found a taste in the air, a sound that tickled your ear just so. By the fifth body, maybe the seventh, screams became exciting, didn’t they? Not the dead body, that is horrifying, but that look, when you are holding someone else's life in your hands and there's nothing they can do because they are completely powerless. When you see that look in their eyes of absolute panic just before they die, there's nothing like it. It's the sweetest thing there is.”

Daenerys’ eyes widened. Sansa could not read what emotion they reflected, innocence would be easy to project on the beautiful queen. Sansa knew better. "You see, Jon may have fought in battles, and Arya may have run around ruthlessly assassinating people, but I lived with monsters. I know them. I have known _you_ all my life."

Sansa turned her back to the Queen, pulled her night robe down just enough to reveal the thick red marks that clawed up her back and over her shoulder, the thin white lines buried beneath them, the history of her past written in her skin. She replaced her robe quickly, unwilling to offer herself in any way to another. "We are all heroes in our own stories, yet, someone must be the enemy. We all live in our own terror, is it not so?"

Daenerys saw every scar, wondered what evils could have befallen such a woman, having thought her own life one full of horror. "Yes,” she agreed numbly, unused to her threats being met with the disinterested response Sansa Stark offered. Daenerys licked her lips, intimidated by this girl as she had not been by anyone since the birth of her dragons, “Power is a dangerous thing."

"Only when wielded by the wrong person or for the wrong purpose."

"One day you will understand what it means to do what I have done. You will understand why it was necessary.”

"I sincerely hope I do not, Your Grace. Now, I am exhausted, and we shall all most likely die tomorrow, I would enjoy a night’s peace before then."

"I have offered you sisterhood, and you reject it?”

“I have a sister.”

“If you do not trust me—”

“I may be young, Your Grace, but I have lived long enough to know that _trust_ is the deadliest weapon of all.”

The Queen walked to the door, her hands shaking, and Sansa thought she was lucky that Jon had bedded this woman. If he had not, she surely would have been burned for this. But then, if he hadn’t bedded her, this woman would not be here, insulting the memory of every Stark who had lived within these walls.

“Defiant girls burn just as quickly as everyone else. If you betray me—"

"You will burn me into nothingness. I understand." Sansa turned to her table, rearranging her necklace, expecting the Queen to disappear as abruptly as she had entered the room.

But Daenerys waited, regained her composure, “You forget yourself. I have dragons. You—"

And then the Queen had her full attention. Sansa did not need threats of violence to be intimidating. Her impassivity was enough. "Dragons cannot frighten me."

"Dragons frighten everyone."  
  
"This is the North, Your Grace. We are all beasts of legend here."

 ---

Jon should have gone to his Queen, but he was too sullen after his conversation with Sansa, too angry, too consumed with it. She always did this to him. She took him apart without meaning to, immediately attempting to piece him together again when she saw his pain. She aggravated him, drove him mad, then she calmed him, affirmed him, apologized and made it right. It was an experience he had never had before, to argue and reconcile, to be frustrated and then make peace. It was an obsession now, her words repeating in his head, her looks burned through his mind. He could not escape them. There was no escaping her.

When he had been on Dragonstone he hadn’t left her behind, flying on the back of a dragon hadn’t removed him from her, even when she wasn’t speaking to him or looking at him, he couldn’t ignore her. It only made him all the more desperate for her attention. Worse than what she did to him was the thought that she didn’t know, didn’t intend to, didn’t want to.

He was the boy who had caused her mother immense pain by his mere existence. He was the man who had discounted her advice only to need her to rescue him when they took back Winterfell. He refused to heed her when he went to Dragonstone, only to learn she was right, it was a trap, he had been taken prisoner.

And now, she told him what he knew. It wounded him more to hear it from her lips than it did to know the truth himself. She was right, again. He could not, would not say it. He could not acknowledge the truth until it was finished. Until they had defeated death or were dead themselves. He may no longer be a bastard, but he could still live like one, just a little longer. If they lived—he would worry about the consequences when it was finished.

He was standing in the training yard, where he had spent so much time with his cousins as children, his gloom not at all hindered by his sense of loss.

Arya appeared from nowhere. "So you love her."

Jon looked at her sharply.

“Daenerys. You love Daenerys.” She smiled, “Did you think I meant someone else?”

Jon huffed. Weary of answering questions, attempting to stop the whispers, tired of being forced to convince people of how he felt. "She's--I have never met anyone like her."

"Lay with her, love her" with a shrug. "I don't care." Jon smiled, just a little, pleased that one person wasn’t intent on retrieving some promise or explanation from him. Relieved because he had the suspicion that Arya was fully capable of detecting his lies.

Arya pulled Needle and slowly ran the blade across the stomach of a training dummy. "Do whatever you must with her, whatever you want with her, just do not trust her."

"I trust few people now."

"You can trust Sansa."

"Now _you_ defend her?"

"We have all changed. Sansa is as loyal as father, as cunning as mother. I don't think anyone else would have been able to hold the North together while you were away."

"I had suspected that."

"Cousins aren't so closely related that..." Arya stopped herself. "Never mind. It would be convenient is all." She delivered several stabs into the form in quick succession, moving needle quicker than Jon had ever seen a sword fly.

"You can't be serious." 

"The pack protects their own. I just want you both safe."

"I have a lover."

"And yet you cannot express a sentiment beyond your desire for her armies and dragons.” She lowered her voice and mimicked his accent, “We need allies.”

“I—she is—she is very beautiful. Any man would be—”

“Well done, Jon. Maybe if you talk about it a little more you’ll convince yourself.” Arya had finished slicing the dummy to pieces and turned on him now with her probing dark eyes. “Sansa is right. You aren’t going to convince her or yourself that she’s wrong. So, you can stand here moping over being scolded,” Arya suddenly struck a blow, slicing the head cleanly off the dummy, “or you can spend what may be the last night of your life with the woman you love.”

Jon blanched.

Arya slid Needle into its scabbard, “You’ll always be my brother. I love you. Please stop being an idiot.” Jon would have pulled into himself at her reproof, but Arya grabbed him, hugged him as tightly as she ever had as a girl. “Don’t let this be the end. What if one of you survives?” She stepped away from him, her inscrutable face for once hinting at her own grief, her own fears. “What if she has to live with this?” She began to walk away, then stopped, “The godswood. She and Ghost went into the godswood.”

\---

Sansa hadn’t waited for Brienne to return to her room after the Queen left her. She had grabbed her furs and summoned Ghost to come with her. She sat beneath the heart tree, not because it was a comfort, not because she believed in it anymore, because the cold numbed her, and she no longer wanted to feel anything at all.

She did not want to think of Queens or Kings, of crowns or wars, of life or death, she wanted to fade into the stillness of the godswood, become senseless leaves and wavering steam from the dark pool at her feet, become nothing. She wanted to discard the burden of being what and who she was, the obligations she had, the danger she was always in.

She wanted to forget _him_ —and just as she thought of him he appeared before her. No doubt summoned by the fact that she wanted to think of him, to see him, least of all.

He did not hesitate as she would have expected, instead he came to her and knelt. “I am a stubborn fool.”

Ghost had risen to his feet, and now pushed himself between Jon and Sansa, knocking Jon off balance, causing Sansa to smile, faintly, “You’re an ass.”

“Aye. You’re right. I knew it before you ever said it. I know what she is. I just—” He sighed, as if, in spite of death marching towards them, she was his greatest annoyance, “—you’re always right.”

She smiled again, a little brighter than before, but her worry was still written in her eyes. Even finding agreement did nothing to appease her. She sighed, “You did what you thought was best. None of us knew. We couldn’t—who would have expected—we can worry about everything after.”

He hesitated, then took her hand. “I am not owed anything. You and Arya and Bran, you owe me nothing at all, least of all your love. You keep reassuring me of it as if everything has changed.” He looked at her pale face, cautiously, “Unless it has?”

She squeezed his hand in turn. "You don't have to earn love. It doesn't come with conditions. You were one of us from your first day, you will be until your last.”

“I am. Never doubt it.”

“I didn’t—did I, did I make you think I questioned your loyalty?”

"It doesn't matter."

"It matters to me."

He could not speak with Sansa without some form of argument it would seem. "I'm not a king anymore, Sansa. You did have to appease me. I won't have you behave that way with me."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I see how you smile at the Lords. You did it to me before I left for Dragonstone."

"I did _what_?"

Jon pushed Ghost aside and moved closer to her until she looked into his eyes, her hand still in his, his heated breath falling on her, “You did nothing, not really. All you had to do was look at me.”

A delicate flush came to her cheeks. 

"Effective, isn't it?" He didn’t look away, his eyes still searching hers, but he smiled. She stuttered out a laugh. He couldn’t look away from her, couldn’t lie to her now, “I don’t love her.”

“I’m glad.”

“You don’t despise me?”

“We all find solace in our own way.”

“That’s not why—I had to bring her North—I didn’t want—”

“I know. You don’t have to explain to me.” She leaned forward, her head dropped to his shoulder, red hair splayed across his black cloak. “Let’s not fight.”

He could hardly speak. “Alright.”

“You don’t know how afraid I was while you were away.”

“I’m sorry.”

“She kept you prisoner, and you came back, and I thought—”

“I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t question your loyalty.”

“That was you _not_ questioning me?’

Instead of the laugh he anticipated, Jon heard a sniffle. “Sansa?”

“I’m frightened as I have never been frightened before.”

“We have done everything we can to prepare—”

“No, I don’t mean the white walkers.”

Jon took a breath and hesitated before slipping his arm around her. Although her head was pressed against his shoulder, pulling her closer felt presumptuous. She let out a gasping breath, pulling herself towards him by the leather straps across his chest, wanting to be held. An hour ago he would have said facing Sansa when she was angry was painful, but now, seeing the woman who rode onto a battlefield to preside over victory without flinching, who sentenced her husband to death and watched him be torn and mauled without averting her eyes, who ruled over the North without faltering, seeing this woman weep and shake from some unknown fear broke him.

“Sansa,” he held her, he did not know what else to do. “What’s happened?”

Sansa shook her head, her eyes closed as if she needed him but could not bear to look at him. She lifted her arms from his chest to put them around his neck and wept. She mourned as if some part of her was being torn away, and he could do nothing other than sit and wait. _Now_ he knew suffering.

“Sansa” he whispered, running his hand over her hair, caressing to comfort her, succeeding in only bringing forth more tears from her. He was helpless.

At some point the sobs subsided, she lifted her face and kissed his cheek, and he was filled with shame that she merely wanted to show gratitude and he felt—he could not allow himself to feel _that_.

“Why can no one choose me? Why am I so hard to love?”

That such words were spoken by Sansa, that she believed them, it was a desecration. That she had reason to believe them, worse, that he had, in his anger, permitted it. “ _I_ love you, Sansa” in a strangled voice.

“I know. No one is as good as you, Jon. You love us all, have always even—”

“No,” he took her face in his hands, her precious, pale face that had haunted him for so long. “ _No_ ,” he could barely force himself to look into her eyes, yet he could not look away. “You. I have always loved _you_.” His thumb brushed her cheekbone, his eyes anxiously scanned her face for a reaction. He found none. “I know the cost of our loves. I know too well how they fall on the scale, one outweighing the other. I know what you tried to tell me. _I know_.” She was looking at him now, and he was afraid, but he would say the words that he had been unable to silence. “I never had the chance to choose you, but I would. I would choose you every time.”

In a voice so faint Jon wondered if he imagined it, “Jon—” She hesitated, as if unsure she understood him, as if a doubt remained.

His lips brushed her cheek, “Always you.”

She did not move away, her lips were so very close to his, “So choose me. Nothing is stopping you now.”

He breathed, a lifetime of sorrow ran through his lungs. Theirs had been a shared suffering, a shared struggle, a shared rise. Theirs would be a shared victory. His fingers slid through her hair, for the first time he felt no shame in how he loved it.

Ghost whined at them, and Jon half smiled, a look Sansa recognized from before, when they stood together in the snow, when he had remembered father’s promise. And then she had to smile too because it had been since then. Jon had chosen her before, all along. She thought of herself, perhaps there had never been a choice to make at all, for either of them. Her arms were still around him, so she pulled him closer, and suddenly they were in the tent again, in the Lord’s chambers, they were so close, and his eyes were dark and wanting.

His voice was so low, “May I?”

Her smile told him only of happiness, only of hope, “What do you think?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally going to be my "angry Sansa" fic, but after the premiere, I am feeling FANTASTIC about the odds of Dark Dany, Political Jon, and Jonsa becoming canon. So, I turned it into another Jonsa fic for my series because like Sansa, I have faith in Jon. And it's all gonna be alright.
> 
> Also, how hilarious is it that I gave more credit to Dany for trying to place nice than D&D did? I thought I had made her too dark, turns out, I didn't go hard enough! S8 is gonna be Sansa's season!


End file.
